Re: [compost_tea] compost tea and biodynamics

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 23:01:47 -0400

The biodynamic preps CAN be useful for addition to compost teas, as some of the preps, when fresh, are nicely fungal. Some outstanding fungal diversity in some of the preps. But once dried, the fungal biomass isn't so great.

I think (please note that means no solid data) there is some validity in the imparting of energy to water when a vortex or Malcolm Rae machine (I rhink that's the right spelling) is used. Measuring the benefit is not that easy. What exactly do you measure to show benefit? Perhaps 75 to 80% of the time, we see increased bacterial and/or fungal activity, and resultant increases in total bacterial and/or fungal biomass.

What about the other 20 to 25% of the time? Decreased activity, or no change as compared to the control. Lots to yet test here. Why the 20 to 25% no-benefit seen? What other factor exists here that we are not paying attention to?

Someone suggested moon phase to me when I was in Australia, and so I went back and looked at the dates. Not related to the phase of the moon, as far as I can tell. Or maybe biodynamic folks need to teach me more about moon phases than I am aware of?

Anyway, I think there is something to at least some biodynamic approaches. We need to discover what those basic repeatable factors are, and weed out the factors that give variation. When something fails to give a benefit 20% or more of the time, it's too great a failure rate.

Compost tea production has been very much the same in the past. Too variable and too inconsistent. Sometimes you'd get good results, sometimes not. The failure, or the no-benefit rate was too great. But once we started making actively aerated compost tea, then the results were consistent and reliable.

OK, you have to make actively aerated compost tea to get consistent results. If you let the putrefactive microbes take over, and don't return to aerobic conditions before application, you can be in trouble. Or really, your plants will be in trouble. The only times I've killed plants is when I've let brews go anaerobic. Not all brews that appeared to be anaerobic killed the plants, but too often they do kill plants.

Now, there are some interesting results when you add EM inocula in teas. Steve Diver talks about this, and I would like to do more work on these bacteria. They are fermentative bacteria, and when anaerobic conditions occur, they produce lactic acid, malic acid, and other fermentative products. You get less production of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, or the really smelly organic acids. Or, most of the time you don't. Still more to be understood here.

How benefiical are the fermentative bacteria for plant growth? I am not aware that anyone has made a study of this. Maybe the EM folks could set me straight, and send some data for the group to look at?

In any case, do the biodynmaic preps, the liquid manures (look out for the human pathogens please!), or the plant extracts benefit microorganisms? Sure. But the variability in beneficial results is too great.

I don't like to write things off just because some people have messed up while doing the methods......

So, there's something useful there. It's going to take some work to figure out exactly what, and how to management it reliably.

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
SFI Corvallis, OR
SFI Port Jefferson, NY
SFI Lismore, NSW, Australia
SFI Hilversum, The Netherlands
SFI Cambridge, New Zealand
www.soilfoodweb.com

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Received on Wed Sep 17 2003 - 01:31:16 EDT

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